It is exactly 50 years today that Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus, was launched and within a few weeks – by August 16 – the offensive was completed, with the invasion force spreading eastwards and westwards and dividing the island into a north and south. In less than four weeks, several thousand people were killed while close to 200,000 – one third of the population – left their homes seeking safety and have never returned. Others were taken prisoners by the invasion troops, while more than a thousand men were declared missing.
Many thousands who had fled their homes, with a few possessions, ended up sleeping in the fields, under trees until they were moved into tents in what came to be known as refugee camps. Cyprus had never experienced human suffering and devastation on such a scale. People lost everything – loved ones, their homes, their livelihoods and all sense of security. In effect, they had their lives and future taken away from them. They had nothing in an economy that had been devastated by the invasion and could offer them little more than some food and life in a tent.
Yet within a few years of this disaster everyone had a roof over their head, most people were working – others sought employment abroad – and got on with trying to improve their lives. A lot of financial aid came from abroad – particularly from the United States – and helped build refugee estates, which created jobs and helped the economy grow, but this can take nothing away from the astonishing survival instinct and resilience of the Greek Cypriots, many of whom lost everything, but never gave up – never allowed the devastating blows they were dealt defeat them. They may have started from zero again, but their determination to improve the lives of their families remained intact.
This resilience and ability to cope with hardship, is a feature of Cyprus’ entire population. The Turkish Cypriots also survived in extremely difficult conditions from 1964 to ’74, blockaded in their villages with little contact with the outside world and several thousands were uprooted from the south after the invasion and moved to the occupied territory for their safety. They also survived difficult years in the north.
This tenacious resilience that we share, resilience that could be described as sheer stubbornness, could be one of the reasons we have been unwilling to agree to a settlement that would reunite the island and make all of it part of the EU. Perhaps, what was completely broken in 1974, cannot be fixed. People, it would seem, do not want to fix it, 50 years later, because they probably consider reunification too big a risk to take. They have built new lives, which they consider more secure in the conditions prevailing since the second half of 1974. And today, the majority of the populations, north and south of the dividing line, have no experience other than that of a divided country.
